Gresham

“ Before 1565 he set up mills on the estate for paper, oil, and corn, the paper-mills being the earliest of the kind in England. Subsequently Gresham purchased the manor of Heston, in which Osterley House stood. He had other houses at Intwood and Westacre, Norfolk, and Ringshall, Suffolk. The goods at Westacre were valued at 1,655l. 1s. In London Gresham lived at Gresham House, Bishopsgate Street, which he built a few years before 1566. The furniture there was valued at 1,127l. 15s. 8d. At Gresham House he dispensed a lavish hospitality, of which all classes were glad to take advantage. ”

“ Gresham was author of 'Memorials' to Edward VI and Queen Mary, a manuscript journal quoted by Ward (Gresham Professors; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. vii. 416) , and his letters are numerous. He also left a manuscript containing musical lessons and songs in English and Italian (Millington, Bibliotheca Massoviana, 1687, p. 63) . In person he seems to have been above the middle height, and grave and courteous in his deportment.
Gresham married in 1544 Anne, the daughter of William Ferneley of West Creting, Suffolk, and widow of William Read, also of Suffolk, and a citizen and mercer of London. ”

“ All these arrangements were made before the return of Master Gresham: he had been presiding at a meeting of the Mercers’ Company. Seldom had he appeared so much out of spirits, even before he heard the account Ernst had to give him. The merchants of London, he said, were universally against this Spanish marriage. They were too well acquainted with the affairs of Europe, and with the character of the Emperor and his son, not to dread the worst consequences to England. The cruelties exercised over the inhabitants of the Low Countries had driven numerous skilled artisans to England ”

“ The raising of loans was still Gresham's main occupation. Count Mansfeld, a German nobleman, who owned silver and copper mines in Saxony, offered through him in 1560 to lend the English government 75,000l. The council referred the offer to Gresham, who sent his factor, Clough, into Saxony to arrange the terms. Clough was magnificently entertained, and concluded the bargain at ten per cent., returning to Antwerp on 2 July 1560. ”

“ La Mothe states that Gresham also secretly supplied the merchants in London with money, so that the greater part of the value of two cloth fleets sent to Hamburg (estimated at 750,000l.) never returned to this country in specie or merchandise, but remained in Germany to strengthen Elizabeth's credit on the continent. Gresham now advised the council to endeavour to obtain from the London merchants the loans for which they had hitherto depended upon foreign money-lenders. ”

“ Lady Gresham has one there now. Miss Leighton may be all Reginald thinks she is, but if she puts herself in the position of an employee she must expect an employee’s fare, and not thrust herself upon first-class people. 104You will only pay second-class for her if she goes there.”
Lady Gresham and the English and paying second-class were influencing Mrs. Hallam mightily, but a dread of Rex, who when roused in the cause of oppression would not be pleasant to meet, kept her hesitating, until Bertha herself settled the matter. ”

“ On leaving Sir John Leigh, I hastened back to Gresham House, where I found Sir Thomas. He listened attentively to my account. “The traitors! the unhappy bigots!” he exclaimed more than once as I proceeded with it. “Order my horse and four attendants; I will set forth immediately and visit the Secretary, and inform him of this matter. Every hour may be of consequence.”
On his return, Sir Thomas told me that Sir William Cecil had received the information with great calmness, fully believing, however, the whole account. ”

“ The original sign was seen by Pennant; and Mr. Burgon assures us that it continued in existence as late as 1795, being removed or stolen on the erection of the present [Pg 1078] building. Gresham was not only a mercer and merchant adventurer, but a banker—a term which in those days of 10 or 12 per cent. interest meant also, "a usurer, a pawnbroker, a money scrivener, a goldsmith, and a dealer in bullion" (Burgon) . After his knighthood, Gresham seems to have thought it undignified to reside at his shop, so left it to his apprentice, and removed to Bishopsgate, where he built Gresham House. ”

“ There were three villages between Gresham and Alton: Red Hill, Stanbridge, and Westover. James stopped in Red Hill at a quick-lunch wagon, which was drawn up on the principal street under the lee of the town hall, went in, ordered and ate with relish some hot frankfurters, and drank some coffee. He had eaten a plentiful breakfast before starting, but the keen air had created his appetite anew. Beside him at the counter sat a young workingman, also eating frankfurters and drinking coffee. Now and then he gave a sidelong and supercilious glance at James's fine clothes. ”

“ In the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came, and Frank Gresham, with his honourable lady wife and all the De Courcys at his back, found that he had mortally offended the county. To his great disgust another candidate was brought forward as a fellow to his late colleague, and though he manfully fought the battle, and spent ten thousand pounds in the contest, he could not recover his position. A high Tory, with a great Whig interest to back him, is never a popular person in England. No one can trust him, though there may be those who are willing to place him, untrusted, in high positions. ”

“ He also asks permission for himself, the sheriffs, and six aldermen to visit the infant prince Edward, and petitions for redress for some ill-treatment sustained at Dublin by some London merchants.
In the August of 1538 he entertained the ‘French lords’ at Cromwell's request, caused the ‘ymages in powlles’ to be taken down, and requested that his son might be appointed the king's servant. Gresham was probably the governor of the Company of Merchant Adventurers this year (1538) ; he appears to have been deputy-governor in 1536 (Letters, &c. Hen. VIII, xi. 484) . ”

“ Master Clough punished me for what he was pleased to call my idle behaviour, during the time of the breaking of the images, by making me copy out the whole of a long letter he wrote to Sir Thomas Gresham, giving an account of the affair. He acknowledged that the mob, although he called them ruffianly rascals, had evidently been influenced by one sole motive, that was—to do away with all the symbols of Popery; that neither man nor woman had been in the slightest degree injured, nor a single article (great as was the value of many of them) appropriated by the image-breakers. ”

“ Under the incentive of the example of the monasteries, the great ladies recognized and frequently performed their full duty toward their dependants. The Countess of Richmond maintained a number of poor people within her own walls. In the sixteenth century, Lady Gresham left, by her will, tenements in the city, the rents of which were to be used for the poor. ”

“ Times have altered since the days of Old Gresham, the site of whose Exchange cost less than £4,000, while the present building comes to £150,000, exclusive of the cost of the ground. In his time, grave and sober citizens had mustachios and imperials; and wild young fellows, bent upon mischief and dissipation, repaired to the taverns of the city. In our days everybody is smooth shaved, and there is a chapel in every corner. Formerly the merchants relied on their own understanding and the honesty of their high-born debtors ”

“ Gresham’s garden was in Broad Street, with its lectures on music and all science. King Richard’s Crosby Hall, and Shoreditch with its unhappy leman of Edward IV, were hard by; whilst Milton’s birth-place, his retreat, and his grave were close at hand.
The picturesque character of old London, graced by the sparkling Thames of olden time, is a circumstance not to be forgotten, when we are calling up the memories of any class of its inhabitants.
In 1677 the city was full of fine residences for merchants; and in this list we meet with names of entertainers of wits of the time. ”

“ Whether the superiority of the new men was such as to make it advisable to supersede the old is another question, on which we would not attempt to pronounce an opinion, either one way or other. One thing, however, we may believe on the evidence of James Gresham, whose letters frequently give us very interesting political intelligence: the changes created dissatisfaction in some of the queen’s own friends, particularly in the Duke of Buckingham, who was half-brother to two of the discharged functionaries, the Archbishop of Canterbury and 173 Viscount Bourchier. ”

“ The Excise office was afterwards removed to the mansion of Sir J. Frederick, in Ironmonger Lane, and remained there until 1768, when the trustees of the Gresham estates let the ground on which Gresham College and Almshouses stood, extending from Bishopsgate Street to Broad Street, to Government for £500 per annum, the City and Mercers' Company further agreeing to pay out of the Gresham funds the sum of £1,800 towards [161] the demolition of the college and the building of the Excise Office. ”

“ In the fifteenth century John Gresham or his son James, eleven of whose letters are preserved in the Paston collection, moved to Holt, three miles distant. James's son John married Alice, a lady of fortune, daughter of Alexander Blyth of Stratton, and resided chiefly in London, where their four sons, William, Thomas, Richard, and John, were brought up to trade. Richard, born at Holt about 1485, was apprenticed to John Middleton, an eminent London mercer and merchant of the staple at Calais, and was admitted to the freedom of the Mercers' Company in 1507, being then of age. ”

“ The exchange soon became a fashionable lounge for citizens of all classes, and the shops in the upper walk or pawn fetched high rents, and were regarded as one of the sights of London. A record exists in the Inquest Book of Cornhill ward of the `presentment' of the exchange in 1574 for the disturbance occasioned there on 'Sondaies and holy daies' by the `shoutinge and hollowinge' of young rogues, that honest citizens cannot quietly walk or hear themselves speak (Burgon, ii. 355) . Gresham's exchange was destroyed in the fire of 1666. ”

“ Many of the materials for Gresham's Bourse came from the Low Countries, and were shipped thence under the superintendence of Gresham's agent, Richard Clough. Clough's letters from Antwerp, where he was stationed, give in quaint phraseology a good deal of information as to the progress of the work which was being prepared over there both for Sir Thomas Gresham and the more exalted "Sir William Cecil, the Queen's Majesty's principal Secretary," afterwards Lord Burghley. ”

“ CLOUGH, RICHARD (d. 1570) , merchant and factor for Sir Thomas Gresham, came of a family which had been long seated in North Wales. His father, Richard Clough, was of sufficient consideration in Denbigh, where he followed the trade of a glover, to marry into two families of note; his first wife was a Whittingham of Chester, and his second wife the daughter of Humphrey Holland. He survived to so great an age that he obtained the epithet of Hen, or The Old, having lived, it is said, during the reigns of Henry VII and VIII, of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. ”

“ Twice during Edward's reign, apparently by his advice, the English merchant fleet was detained when on the point of sailing for Antwerp until the owners of the goods agreed to advance certain sums of money to be repaid within three months in London at a high rate of exchange fixed by the crown. On 3 Oct. 1552 a loan of 40,000l. was thus obtained from the merchant adventurers. On 28 April 1553 Gresham, in a letter to the council, boasts that he has so plagued foreign merchants and intimidated English merchants that they will both beware of meddling with the exchange for London in future. ”

“ Gresham, Esq. patron of them all; and this church was immediately pulled down. The steeple is round, and is still standing, being very small, as was the church, which had a nave, chancel, and south porch; the churchyard is ploughed up to the walls; it stands on a hill between Hertford-bridges and Intwood, on the south side of the river, and the ruins are seen at some distance. There are a very few houses besides the hall; the whole village belonging with Intwood, to John Lord Hobart of Blickling. ”

“ The Bishop of London having excused himself entertaining the cardinal at Fulham, his eminence was lodged and hospitably treated for a whole week by Gresham. During his visit he paid a visit, Huguenot as he was, to the French Church established in the city, where his co-religionists were allowed to worship without fear of molestation. He further paid his host the compliment of visiting the Exchange, then approaching completion. At the end of the week he removed to Sion House, where accommodation had been found for him.1547
The city crowded with refugees from the continent. ”

“ It became the center of London's business life. Its great bell rang at midday and at 6 p.m. Its courtyard was lined with shops that rented at 50s. yearly and became a popular social and recreational area. Gresham formulated his law that when two kinds of money of equal denomination but unequal intrinsic value are in circulation at the same time, the one of greater value will tend to be hoarded or exported, i.e. bad money will drive good money out of circulation. ”

“ The Queen declared that this beautiful building should be no longer called the Burse, but gave it the name "The Royal Exchange." In the illustration some naughty boys have trespassed upon the seclusion of the busy merchants, and the beadle is endeavouring to drive them out of the quadrangle.
This fine building was destroyed by the Great Fire, when all the statues fell down save that of the founder, Sir Thomas Gresham. His trustees, now known as the Gresham Committee, set to work to rebuild it, and employed Edward German as their architect, though Wren gave advice concerning the project. ”